Racial Stereotypes on the Campaign Trail

I came across this segment while listening to NPR earlier this week. New Gingrich recently referred to President Obama as the “food stamp” president. Many people–like Rep. James Clyburn who is quoted in the article–see this as an attempt to build on the stereotype that blacks profit disproportionally from welfare programs. However, this perception is false. Blacks are not the majority of food stamp recipients. I think that it is interesting to think of ways that phrases like this or “welfare queen”, commonly used in political rhetoric, perpetuate existing dominant ideologies about race even when they rely on false statistics.